Miranda (32 page)

***

“Miranda! Miranda! Miranda!”

A light came on. Blood… there was blood everywhere. Eliezer ran to me and removed the pistol from my shaking hands. The man who lay by my side hadn’t died. He was still breathing and began to rise. Eliezer got close to him and pointed the gun at him. He shot him twice and threw the gun to the ground. I collapsed. Eliezer came to my side, put his hands on my back, hugged me, and pulled me up.

“Miranda… What have they done to you? What the hell have they done to you?”

The little breath that I had left wasn’t enough to speak to him… to tell him. With one of my bloody hands, I grabbed his. I placed it on my abdomen. His eyes were tearing.

“I know, Wise. I know.”

I smiled… I couldn’t find the strength to do more.

“No! Don’t do that! Don’t sleep! Open your eyes! Look at me! God damn it! Look at me!

No. I can’t see you. It’s too dark. Turn the light on…

“Miranda!”

Rays of sunlight filtered through the bulging branches of the trees, forming abstract figures on my bare feet. I’ve always enjoyed the coolness that would find its way into the wood overnight. In the last few months, feeling it against the soles of my feet was the only thing that reminded me that I was still alive, above ground and not six feet under. The lawn still released an aroma from the rain that had punished it overnight–an unusual condition, considering that it wasn’t the rainy season in Panama. The breeze was fresh. I could feel it with every sigh. My lungs wanted to give up, having declared a war on air. They no longer wanted its caresses. They no longer wanted those gifts of life that came with every breath.

Two or three months had passed since my arrival, I couldn’t be sure. Before that, I had spent three weeks recovering in the hospital after the surgery to repair the damage to my collarbone. It had been hit by one of the bullets. The doctors didn’t want to stop monitoring the progress of the first trimester of my pregnancy, and I agreed with them. Norman didn’t leave my side for even a day. Margaret visited me every evening, and Alex from time to time, but no one else. No one else came.

The presence of my adoptive parents was suffocating. None of them could scare away the darkness to which those soulless men condemned me that terrible night. Alex didn’t ask questions, but only sat by my side, taking in my pain.

Hernandez owed me a favor, that’s why he couldn’t refuse when I begged him to get me out of that hospital so that no one would know about it.

“Don’t you think it’s risky to leave the country? And what if you have a medical emergency at 50,000 feet?”

“The doctor authorized it. I need to disappear. Moreover, I am not going to be flying commercial. The pilot can get us back to an airport fast enough if need be.”

Alex, with Margaret’s help, took charge of preparing my flight with a nurse and a specialist physician. He knew that it would put him in a difficult position with Norman, but the truth was that I didn’t care about anyone or anything anymore.

We left that evening.

“Miranda, take this.” Hernandez handed me a white envelope. “He asked for me to give this to you.”

“Did you tell him?”

“No, but he knows.”

Where is he? How is he? Why isn’t he with me? Why hasn’t he come to see me even once?

Hernandez must have interpreted my silence as sorrow. He tried to make me feel better.

“It’s not going well for him.”

“Don’t excuse him.”

Even though I was dying to know about him, I couldn’t bear the extra weight on the baggage I was carrying.

“Things have become complicated.”

“Enough!” I took the envelope. “Take care of yourself, Hernandez. Thanks for everything.”

Alex took my arm, and I began walking. Even though I had my back to him, Hernandez drew out his goodbye.

“Likewise, Miranda Wise. Likewise.”

Before getting on the plane, I dropped the white envelope. There was no room on the plane for anyone else.

***

Some footsteps were softly coming close. It was Rosa. She paused by my side. She brought me a cup of orange juice. She placed it on the parquet floor and a hand of consolation on my shoulder, just as she had done every evening since I agreed for her to stay in the cabin.

Rosa’s presence was the thing on which Norman and Luis Bartolome insisted as a condition to leave me alone after having learned of my escape. I agreed, not for their sake, but because I didn’t feel like even getting myself a drink of water.

I turned toward her with a weak smile, and thanked her. She, Norman, Luis, Julio, Alex, and Margaret had stopped asking me questions and offering me words of encouragement. All of them gave up, allowing me to sink into bitterness, alone. They noticed that the only way they could support me would be from a distance.

I took the cup and barely could take a sip. The tartness hurt the wounds to my soul. I continued drinking, but not for myself. If that were the only reason, I would have already starved, or pursued one of those crazy ideas that, at times, seduced me.

Rosa left the house and, within minutes, I heard other steps approaching. I didn’t want to turn around, not even when I knew the presence was unusual. They were firm footsteps and they advanced rapidly. I knew those footsteps. I knew them very well. They paused by my side and remained that way.

I didn’t want to look at him. I kept my eyes fixed on the shadows that the sun was drawing on my skin. The breeze took it upon itself to confirm the identity of the visitor. That scent… that unforgettable scent. I closed my eyes. I imagined him sitting on the floor, by my side, because the parquet boards creaked distinctively.

“Miranda…”

He spoke my name as he always did, with that spicy sparkle that can be known only through the pleasure of hearing it. I knew that the day would come. I wouldn’t have predicted it so soon. I wasn’t prepared. Not yet.

“Everything is over, Miranda,” he paused to clear his voice. “At home, we are very worried about all of you. You must return, take care of yourself, and seek help if necessary… please.”

His voice exuded the same tone as always. It was the same icy voice that a few months ago could ignite every cell of my body. Could it be that man would never change?

“I may be the last person that you want to see. I understand. You have every right and, even though I refuse to accept it, you’re absolutely right. Nevertheless, the others haven’t been successful in their aims, and I can’t keep my arms crossed.”

I was incapable of reacting. I had turned to stone. Not even my enlarged breasts moved with my breathing. Tears rolled down my cheeks, which surprised me, because I had come to think that I would never again be capable of crying–that I had no tears left in my eyes.

“Would you take care of the baby? Would you take responsibility?”

I tried to keep my voice firm. That was the only plan I could formulate: that Eliezer would give me his word that he would take care of the baby when born, because I wouldn’t. I couldn’t.

“That won’t be necessary,” he paused innocently. “He has both of us.”

I laughed for the first time in months, but it wasn’t exactly out of joy.

“Don’t you realize how screwed up I am? I don’t want the baby to have to live a shitty life with a screwed up mother like you had.”

He got close and tried to give me a hug that I avoided with a scream and a look of anger, fear, and disgust.

Eliezer didn’t give up. He tried to hug me again, using as much force as he could without hurting me.

“Let me go! Leave me alone once and for all!” I wanted to scream, but I could only muster murmurs. “If you had only hugged me like that a few months ago, Eliezer, that night in your office and those many other nights. It was so simple, Eliezer, very, very simple.”

He squeezed me harder.

“I know, Miranda. I know! But please understand. You met me when I was a shit of a man, when everything was a mess. I wish I had done many things differently. I wish I had been able to protect both of you.” His voice cracked. “But it didn’t happen that way, and I live cursing every second that I was incapable of making the right decisions. I live cursing that moment that I let you leave my office with so much pain on your face. Do you remember that Christmas day when I said that my life on January first would be the same as my life on December thirty-first?” He pulled away slightly and held my head between his trembling hands. “Miranda, that was the biggest of my mistakes. My life changed from the instant you uttered the words ‘I love you.’ Shit. And how could it not, since you turned my world upside down? No one has ever said ‘I love you’ to me, not even Isabel. Do you understand that? Can you imagine that?” He sighed. “My silence that night wasn’t a gentlemanly rejection. No! It was caused by ignorance… not knowing how to love. I didn’t know how to feel loved, and that night, damn it, I felt so many things that I felt like my emotions were going to suffocate me. Even today, I can’t describe what I was carrying on my chest that night. There are no words to describe it. There will never be words to describe it, Miranda…. I should have… I should have told you how much I need you, how much pain I feel when you aren’t by my side. I should have told you…”

I moved my hands to interrupt him.

“You shouldn’t bother continuing, Clausell.”

He took my hands, as he did so well on many other occasions.

“Please, listen to what I have to say. Let me tell you my side.”

“There’s no need. I have a thousand versions… a thousand damned versions, and I don’t understand any of them. Another one won’t help.”

He placed a finger on my lips. He drew his face close to mine with that dangerous closeness that intoxicated me with his scent.

That scent…

“If you don’t want to do it for me, don’t do it for me.”

He placed a hand on my abdomen. I so fantasized about such a moment. The tender touch of his roughness caused a sensation in me like the warmth of the sun on my feet after spending so much time in my personal winter.

“Do it for the baby.”

He succeeded in breaking down my walls. I had no choice but to listen. After all, it was the least I could do for the baby that I was determined to not care for, and it was the least that I could do to feed my curiosity.

“I know that Norman told you the reason we left him.” I nodded. He searched for the strength to mention the names of the two people who, one way or another, at different times in his life, had contributed to his cold personality. “When Norman had the accident, Isabel saw the opportunity to come back, to get the money she expected if he died. She wanted to be present to be sure that no one would take even one cent of what, according to her, belonged to us. Norman didn’t die, so she began to weave her first plan: we would take control of the company and sell it. I was so blinded by the anger and hatred I had for Norman,” another pause interrupted the story, “and you, that I agreed to be Isabel’s puppet. You had robbed me of Norman’s attention, time, and love. I needed to get you out of the way, and I was Norman’s Achilles heel. What wouldn’t he do for me? What would he, my father, not do for me?”

My father
. It was the first time that I heard him say those words. I wished that Norman could have been there to hear them too.

“I didn’t rob you of anything, Eli…”

He pressed his finger against my lips a little more.

“Listen to me, just listen to me… I grew up with that reality. That is the story that Isabel turned into my reality.” He smeared his hands on his head and was teary eyed. “You don’t know what it was like to grow up with her, Miranda. You don’t have the… slightest… idea. My paintings were no more than a reflection of my upbringing. The pain that Isabel caused me was splattered on them. My sorrow was engraved on my back. Do you know what it’s like to live like that? It’s a constant reminder of how shitty a boy’s life can be. Every time she would get drunk or inhale the white powder that she would lay out on the same table where we ate, she would repeat the same old thing over and over. She would repeat and repeat the same story: ‘Your father doesn’t love you, Eliezer. He loves some girl instead. That’s why he abandoned you… because you’re nothing.’ What more could you expect from a child that grows up hearing that? Seeing that? What more can you expect from me, Miranda, if I continue being that child?”

For a brief moment, I understood. That child of whom he spoke was peering out through his eyes, and he was frightened, very frightened.

“I didn’t understand why my father was no longer around, why my world had changed from one day to the next, because I only remembered a monster who was about to beat my mother to death, and not the affectionate man that existed before that terrible night.”

“You had the chance to get close to him again.”

“Yes, but that wasn’t my motivation. I wanted to see him suffer. I wanted to hurt him just as he hurt Isabel, and just as he hurt me.”

“All of these years you were tearing yourself apart…”

Again, he used the finger.

“I didn’t realize.” A tear fell. It was the first time that Eliezer displayed such strong emotion. “Until you came. I was doing nothing more than blaming the world for my unhappiness. I was filled with nothing and no one… until you came, Miranda Wise, with your rose-colored glasses, immune to my sarcasm, my insults, my offenses, and my insensitivity. You dared to walk barefoot over the broken glass surrounding my life. And, anyway, you had the nerve to tell me that you loved me. You had the character to show me how wrong I was about you, about Norman, about Medika. I, who later sought to destroy my father after destroying his insufferable company, in time began to appreciate its mission. Medika wasn’t bad. I was the one who was behaving badly. In time, I discovered that Isabel was a schemer and that Norman was not the man I had imagined. You were the one who opened my eyes, who dazzled me with the possibility of living a different, perhaps pleasant, kind of life.”